An ongoing concern among advertisers is that of securing the viewer's attention during the presentation of commercial messages on radio and television. In the case of conventional video and radio broadcast media, there is always a concern that the target audience does not receive the intended message, even if they are watching the program for which the advertising has been purchased. In fact, listeners and viewers have developed a variety of strategies for avoiding conventional commercial messages including using the commercial breaks as an opportunity to pursue short tasks away from the television or radio, "surfing" to other channels during commercials, and simply ignoring the message by "tuning it out." It is well-known that these sorts of activities dilute the impact of an advertiser's message on the viewer/listener and reduce the effective viewership exposed to the message.
There is, however, one captive audience that cannot avail themselves of most of these traditional means of evading advertisements. Additionally, this is an audience that generally would welcome--and attend to--any sort of diversion that might be offered at that particular time and place. The audience that has been described is, of course, passengers within elevators, and especially elevator riders within high-rise buildings. Generally speaking, not only is this a trapped and attentive audience, but it is also an audience that is often nearly desperate for a diversion of any sort. (Consider for example the rapt attention that is often given to the changing elevator floor number display by riders who are attempting to cope with the social consequence of being placed in close physical proximity to a group of total strangers). Additionally, the demographics of the ridership in elevators in high-rise buildings are attractive to many advertisers, as the most frequent passengers in an elevator are likely employed individuals within the building. Thus, these individuals represent a unique audience that most advertisers would dearly love to reach.
In the past, elevator advertising has focused on the use of static displays such as posters. The limitations of posters as advertising media are well-known. Among those limitations are that posters are static displays that cannot be altered except by having an employee pay a visit to the elevator and physically replace it. Additionally, a print-based approach to elevator advertising cannot easily exploit certain well-known behavioral tendencies in large office buildings. In more particular, among many such tendencies are that customers will tend to be more receptive to advertisements related to "morning activities" (e.g., coffee, sweet rolls, restaurants offering breakfast, etc.) as they arrive at work in the morning; more receptive to advertisements for establishments that serve lunch as that time of day nears; more interested in entertainment and dinner dining alternatives as they leave the building for the day; and more receptive to ads related to travel and recreational opportunities near holidays and weekends. However, it is just not economically feasible to exploit these tendencies using a print-based medium, and this is especially true where the number of consumers reached by each ad is relatively small, as it may be within a single elevator car. Additionally, even particular elevators within an office building might have different demographics, which could be exploited by the creative advertiser. For example, a non-stop elevator to the penthouse would tend to carry different sorts of riders (demographics-wise) than a short haul elevator that serves the first 10 floors. Varying the content of print-based ads to reach these different markets would quickly become a logistics and cost nightmare if more than a few elevators were involved.
A natural alternative to a print-based advertising scheme is one that is video--and especially computer--based. This sort of advertising medium certainly would seem, at least on its face, to have the potential to address many of the concerns listed previously and allow an advertiser the flexibility of altering the presentation of ads to match the needs of the riders. However, presenting dynamically scheduled advertising messages to riders in an elevator involves certain unique logistic and technical challenges that might not be encountered in more traditional advertising channels. One obvious consideration from the standpoint of the advertiser with respect to displaying messages via this medium is that the messages must be kept relatively short to permit exposure of the entire message to the viewers between floors. Additionally, managing the ads to reflect and exploit the demographic tendencies discussed previously is a more involved process than it might seem at first. Transmitting the ads to the video display screen within the elevator poses an obvious problem because the elevator is in near constant motion. Additionally, many advertisers would only be interested in a marketing channel that can be used to reach large numbers of potential customers. Although many millions of consumers ride elevators each day, it would take a large network of video-based ad displays to reach any significant number of those riders and, thereby, interest an advertiser that might be looking for regional or national coverage.
Additionally, advertisers often want some sort of verification that a particular ad has been displayed. If, because of a system or power failure, a particular ad is not played as often as it was scheduled to play, the advertiser will be entitled to a partial refund of the ad price, or credit toward a future ad. Verifying for the advertiser that a particular transient graphic image appeared on a computer screen at a particular time is impossible after-the-fact, thus some provision must be made to log--at the time the images are displayed--each ad that is played.
Managing the distribution and monitoring of ad information on a large-scale over a computer network poses certain problems which other inventors have yet to fully appreciate. While there have been some proposed solutions for displaying computer generated information within individual elevators, no one has really addressed the issue of how to manage--on a large scale--a number of disparate displays, each within an elevator that might have its own ridership demographics; nor have the prior art solutions addressed the problem of how to systematically distribute and control the display of a very large number of adds appearing in multiple elevators and buildings, which buildings might potentially be located anywhere within the nation or elsewhere. Finally, no one has considered how the computer hardware--upon which a large-scale computer-based ad distribution network depends--might be monitored for failures and how those failures might be brought to the attention of the network operators.
What is needed, then, is a method and apparatus for controlling on a large scale the distribution and control of advertisements and other short messages in elevators, wherein the messages are preferably displayed on a computer monitor or similar display device within the elevators. The system should offer the ability to target specific elevators within a building or groups of elevators in the same or different buildings. It should also offer the capability of varying the type of ad as a function of the time of day, the day of the week, or day of the year for an individual elevator or for an entire network of elevators. Further, the system should be modular and amenable to a staged growth, allowing the system to be easily increased in size as the number of elevators involved increases. Additionally, it should also provide some means of verifying that an ad has actually been played on a display device at a particular time in a particular elevator. Finally, the network should be self-monitoring and capable of reporting to a central site any hardware or software problems that develop on a remote unit.
A patent search was conducted in the United States Patent and Trademark Office for the purpose of determining whether any similar or related solutions had been previously developed to the foregoing problems. That patent search produced the following references relating to advertising within elevators and methods of distributing short messages such as ads:
U.S. Pat. No. Inventor Title Date of Patent 4,577,177 Marubashi Display Apparatus for Elevator Car Mar. 18, 1986 4,749,062 Tsuji et al. Display Control Apparatus for Elevator Jun. 7, 1988 4,853,678 Bishop, Jr. et al. Advertising Device Aug. 1, 1989 4,995,479 Fujiwara et al. Display Guide Apparatus of Elevator and Its Display Method Feb. 26, 1991 5,056,629 Tsuji et al. Display Apparatus for Elevator Oct. 15, 1991 5,360,952 Brajczewski, et al. Local Area Network Elevator Communications Network Nov. 1, 1994 5,387,769 Kupersmith, et al. Local Area Network Between an Elevator System Building Feb. 7, 1995 Controller, Group Controller and Car Controller, using Redundant Communication Links 5,392,006 Fisher, et al. In-store Advertising System Feb. 21, 1995 5,606,154 Doigan et al. Timed Advertising in Elevators and Other Shuttles Feb. 25, 1997 5,642,484 Harrison, III, et al. Pump Top Advertisement Distribution and Display System with June 24, 1997 Performance and Sales Information Feedback
Some of the patents listed above relate to controlling the operations of an elevator or bank of elevators (responding to rider requests, etc.) rather than managing the distribution of ads in a group of elevators that might be scattered across a city or the nation. For example, Kupersmith, et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,387,769, discloses a network for controlling elevator operations through a system of redundant communication links. However, Kupersmith does not consider the problem of routing and displaying short messages within an elevator. Brajczewski, U.S. Pat. No. 5,360,952, teaches a system for controlling elevator car movement through a local area network, which network is also redundant in some respects. Once again, this patent does not address the unique problems associated with the distribution of ads to elevators over a network.
Other inventors have considered the hardware that might be utilized to display video messages within, or adjacent to, an elevator or other consumer gathering place. Patents of this sort include Fujiwara et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,995,479, (display of elevator operating data), Tsuji et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,749,062, (display of time sensitive greetings and weather reports to car occupants), Marubashi, U.S. Pat. No. 4,577,177, (laser display of information written on the inside of closed elevator door), Tsuji et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,056,629 (display of informational messages and time to car occupants), and Bishop, Jr. et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,853,678 (advertising device incorporating a passive infra-red sensing system as a trigger). None of these patents appreciates or addresses the problem of transporting, scheduling, and displaying targeted graphics and text-based advertising in a multiplicity of elevator locations.
Doigan et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,606,154, discloses a method of displaying short messages to elevator occupants, wherein the message is selected based on the estimated elevator run time until the next stop, the message selected preferably being shorter in duration than the estimated time until the next elevator stop. This approach tends to insure that the car occupants are prepared to exit the elevator when the doors open, rather than remaining on the elevator to see whatever remains of the message that is currently being displayed. Doigan et al. is not concerned with the distribution of messages and remote control of their display, nor does this patent deal with the problem controlling a multiplicity of elevator displays and coordinating the display of ads from a centralized remote location.
Turning now to non-elevator advertising, Fisher et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,392,066, discloses an in-store advertising system which features multiple display devices at the same location that all present the same image simultaneously. Fisher et al. does not address the problem of separately controlling a plurality of monitors at the same location, nor does his invention address the special problems of advertising in elevators. Additionally, Fisher et al. does not recognize nor address the particular problems that arise when large digital ads are transmitted over a network for remote display.
Finally, Harrison et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,642,484, considers an advertisement distribution and display system which utilizes information from an environmental sensor to guide selection of a particular message from among a plurality of message files. However, Harrison's invention does not consider the particular problems associated with management and distribution of large numbers of short ads via a network, Additionally, Harrison's invention does not offer any sort of self-diagnosis for the reporting of hardware and software problems.
Before proceeding to a description of the instant invention, however, it should be noted and remembered that the description of the invention which follows, together with the accompanying drawings, should not be construed as limiting the invention to the examples (or preferred embodiments) shown and described. This is so because those skilled in the art to which the invention pertains will be able to devise other forms of this invention within the ambit of the appended claims.